If you have not read in the past years about the similarities between the music legend and her follower, you must have chucked every single magazine in the bin before opening it.
Yet, looking at what these two artists have been doing in the past year, strikingly evident are not the similarities, but the differences between the two, and I should venture to say that they are diametrical opposites.
Starting, as is due, with the ultra-veteran Queen of Pop, who seems to be still defying age as well as gravity, after her enormously successful MDNA Tour, she has spent a year immersed in non-profit activities, spanning from trying to give independence to the poorest country in the world to what was formerly known as Secret Project, now Art for Freedom.
After months of waiting, which allegedly the Grand Lady of Pop has spent editing the art video, a seventeen minute long film depicting, but not glorifying, and this is the point, extremely violent scenes, where a half naked dancer, and exquisite violinist Jason Yang, arguably one of the greatest musician alive, dances in front of high-booted machos who look down on him in indignation yet with the huge pleasure homophobes must feel when the tingle of their true sexuality tickles them in their dreams, this video, as we were saying, was broadcast in all major cities in the world, outside museums, in streets, and all, yes, for free.
As Miss Ciccone herself states, the reference is to Nazi concentration camps, where victims were allowed to live as long as they could please the officers; so our dancer has to dance for his life.
Now, Madonna has invited other artists to contribute and is offering people money to donate to their favourite charities.
That she gives away tens of millions of Pounds in charity every year is well known, but the fact that she has now found a way to link freedom, art and charity in a virtuous circle shows that, if it were not clear from the super-advanced tour which was actually a parody of one of the most complex poems ever written, Dante's Divine Comedy, the Lady has not run out of ideas, steam and motivation.
On the other hand, Lady Gaga seems to be suffering from lack of inspiration, and whilst her album ARTPOP has as pretentious a title as a typeset (all in capital letters, because it is important and we should not forget it) disappoints from the cover: if that picture is meant to refer to pop art, Miss Germanotta is confusing popping balloons for art.
Apart from the cover, the first single, 'Applause' is a desperate cry for attention, 'I live for the applause, applause, applause' and here is where the two differ: while Madonna makes her private experience into art for others (and no one denies that she is possibly the most ambitious person on the planet, but she has learnt how to put her ambition to the service of her art, and not vice versa, over the years), the less experience Lady seems to have abdicated any interest in being meaningful, and has turned herself, or the image she wants to project of herself, into her whole world.
Of course, the audience is showing signs of disaffection, in the end, there is only so much interest someone can simply claim for oneself.
This does not mean that she is over, in my humble opinion.
Madonna herself has not always hit the right balance between being innovative and commercial (mainly tending towards the first, with albums like Bedtime Stories, ten years ahead of its time and American Life), actually, looking at her cycles, it is usually two less understood albums followed by a massively huge one in recent years; where I find Lady Gaga might have learnt a lesson from the commercial slap on the wrist she is receiving is that she has promised that the next album will be different, possibly jazz, and I find that despite the poor choice of producer (Zedd would be good for a birthday party medley, but he can't seem to be able to melt songs consistently together, and Gaga's new album clearly suffers from this), there is, in terms of melody, something more interesting in Artpop (excuse the typeset) than in previous Gaga songs: there is, despite the lyrics and the bad production, a touch of originality, as if Lady Gaga were actually trying to find her voice, and it is not the super commercial voice or 'Bad Romance', nor the echo of Madonna's 1980s voice of 'Born this Way', but a more punk-oriented one.
If it is true that she does not care for number one hits any more (and she's had a fair share of them), maybe she should start from there, and maybe she should let others decide what is, and what is not, good art.